Remember when I said the next chapter would be out quicker than usual?
I lied.
Here it is though, so please enjoy nonetheless!
Chapter 30: You'll Never Could Face the Flame
The atmosphere had him and everyone else pinned down. Blah may have been here countless times when he played Terraria, but he had only explored it with a virtual life. As the memory of each monster he had encountered in that artificial environment surfaced, Blah felt his skin grow a little bit paler upon imagining them larger-than-life trying to claw and singe his own face off. "S-Sera... I'd greatly appreciate it if you teleported us all out of here pronto... we're not ready for this yet..."
There was no response from the Abra. It was hard to tell if she was even conscious by the way she lay sprawled out on the ash. Blah gulped, forcing something the size of a rock down his throat. "Hail... fly us back?"
Hail spread his wings and took off into the sweltering air. The sheer temperature was hugely draining on his muscles, however, and he couldn't stay airborne for long before having to land again. "It's a no go. I'm not used to flying in this kind of heat..."
Before Blah could attempt to think of another way out, he heard a high-pitched squeal. Blah and Hail turned to look at Broshi frantically swatting at a firey bat with his sword. Blah wasn't sure whether the noise came from him or the bat. A bolt flew from Hail's crossbow as he tried to help, but the hellbat was too fast for both of them and it swooped down to bite Broshi in the head. A reflexive counter-swing on Broshi's part connected with the bat, slicing one of its wings and stunning it long enough for Hail to land a bolt straight through its heart. The bat was dead before it hit the lava.
"...and that's just the first of many," Blah muttered. "We need to dig a shelter." He grabbed his pickaxe and briskly dug down into their island. As he worked, more bats descended from the sky and rose from the lava. Broshi and Hailstorm worked hard to keep them off of Blah and Sera, as well as themselves, but they took plenty of burning scratches and cuts in the process.
Finally, Blah popped his head out of the hole. "Come on!" he shouted, waving them in. Hailstorm gently grabbed Sera by the tail and dragged her in as Broshi stabbed through one last bat before backpedaling towards the hasted hideaway and ducking inside.
The room was large enough to house the four of them at least, and Blah had uncovered some of the glowing red rock which provided fair lighting. Blah took some of the ash he had mined and used it to barricade the entrance to the chamber. He then rooted through his backpack for two more potions and passed them to Broshi and Hailstorm, who gratefully drank away their wounds.
"Whew..." Hail breathed. "Guess we're stuck here until Sera wakes up, huh..." He looked over towards the glowing ore quizzically. "Hey, while we're here... what is this stuff?"
"That's Hellstone," Blah answered. "It's a really powerful material, but mining it leaves behind lava for some reason."
Hail flinched at the thought of this small chamber filling up with lava. "Yipe... nevermind then."
Blah held up his hand. "Actually, maybe if I dug a pit for the lava to fall into we might be able to grab some of it..." Blah began to dig carefully around the rock, hollowing out a large swimming pool-shaped pit below the cluster.
"Are you sure about this...?" the pegasus asked.
"Don't worry, I've done this before, sorta," Blah assured him, though it was apparent that he was overplaying his own confidence. He continued to expand the basin.
Suddenly, Hail shrieked. "Behind you!" Blah did an about-face to see a sparking, large-eared and long-tailed red humanoid behind him at the edge of the newly-dug ditch. With a malicious grin, the imp held up its hand and shot a fireball at Blah, who deflected it hysterically with his pickaxe. He continued to swing at the imp as if he was still digging through the ash, pinning it against the wall until the strength had been mined out of it and it flopped over. Blah panted heavily.
"Fire imps..." he strained, stuck in a mid-swing pose. "I forgot they could teleport into chambers like this one given enough room..."
"So it's not even safe in here?!" Hail inferred, shrinking against the wall as if anticipating another imp to appear at any moment.
"Not entirely... but it's safer than being out there..." Blah said, returning to digging in the ditch. It was already fairly large, and the bottom of it was starting to look more like a tunnel. Occasionally, Blah would feel the walls or ceiling of the chamber and adjust his digging towards the colder areas to avoid accidentally breaching the sides or bottom of the lava ocean.
"Do you think that's big enough...?" Hail asked, hopping into the pit and following him. "How much lava are you expecting, anyway?"
"You can never be too sure. Also, I kinda want to see if I can dig to a larger island..." There was a loud tink as his pickaxe hit something a bit more solid than compacted ash. Rubbing the wall, he could make out some dark-purple bricks. "Or that. That actually works." He put his hand against the bricks, and they were surprisingly cool... relatively-speaking of course. Taking a deep breath, Blah began to chip away at the bricks, Hail watching his back tensely.
By the time Blah had a large-enough hole to look inside, he saw a crazed yellow-eyed stare looking back at him. "Heads up!" Blah warned, switching out to his lance just before the imp teleported on the other side of Hailstorm. A fireball shot through the narrow tunnel, and Hail pressed himself against the side to dodge it as he loaded his crossbow. Blah dispelled the fire with his lance as Hail fired a bolt at the imp, stunning it. The human dashed past his equestrian friend and impaled the flaming foe with his lance, finishing it off.
"Get used to that," Blah advised, returning to digging as quickly as he could while Hail pre-emptively loaded another bolt into his weapon.
Soon enough, Broshi hasted down the tunnel himself, carrying Seraphina, who was barely holding on. "Sera!" Hail greeted, noting that the Abra was at least awake. "Are you ok?"
"My mind's reach... is severely weakened..." Sera's voice echoed quietly through everyone else's heads. "Dark presence... too strong..."
"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you can't teleport," Blah said pessimistically, clearing out a few stray bricks from the now passable entrance into the building.
"No..." Sera's blunt answer made Blah flinch. Even he could feel that she had to push harder than normal just to communicate.
"Great, how are we going to get out of here now?" Hail sighed as everyone filed into the room. "Unless there's a magical staircase in here, it's starting to look kind of impossible..."
Blah looked around the room. There were several large pots all over the place, and there were gaps in the ceiling and floor. On the walls were torches giving off a dim purple light. Blah made a beeline for the pots, smashing each one open with his hammer. Most of them dropped coins, but there were a handful of bombs and a healing potion. "Darn... oh well, next floor I guess."
"What are we looking for exactly?" Hail queried, brushing aside some of the pot debris with his hoof.
"Hell may be home to demons and boiling death," Blah explained, grabbing a handful of ash blocks and building a crude staircase out of them, "but it has its fair share of treasures too."
He climbed the staircase and poked his head above the overhanging room. He was immediately met with the blank white gaze of a horned, winged devil. With a roar, the demon held back its clawed hand, gave it a spun and gathered dark energy around it, which took the shape of a curled scythe. However, Blah was gone long before he could register that much detail and the scythe collided with the bricks above him with a loud POP and dissipated.
Blah's pale expression was a good clue to his party as to what had just tried to violently decapitate him, as well as the loud disorderly fluttering of the beast mobilizing. "G-get your crossbow ready," Blah commanded, but Hailstorm was way ahead of him. With shaky forelegs, the archer trained his weapon on the opening between floors, waiting for the slightest hint of movement.
First came a claw, wrapping around the edge, and then came the monstrosity's head, across which clipped an unholy bolt that tore unholier flesh. Another roar and the demon scrambled down the ashen steps, another shadowy scythe at the ready, but fortunately Broshi was even more so. He went berserk, glints of purple light from his sword and his shades marking each blow until the demon lay mangled on the brick floor. "Yoshi..." panted the reptilian warrior. Even Hail was impressed.
"And that was just one..." Blah muttered, half under his breath. "We've got to hurry." Quickly but cautiously, Blah once again climbed the stairs so he could get a better look at the former nest of the demon. More pots, but as he turned to report his lack of findings, a familiar red glow caught his eye - and this time it was a good kind of familiar. A hellstone-brick fireplace, complete with fire. "Sweet, found a hellforge!" he cried excitedly, enticing Hailstorm and Broshi, still with Sera in tow, to escalate and take a gander.
"Why would you need a fireplace in Hell?" Hail discredited.
"So that it doesn't freeze over," Blah answered mockingly. "Anyway, this is the only kind of furnace you can smelt Hellstone bars in. So, it's coming with us." Instinctively, he pulled out his hammer to collect the forge, but he paused as he realized how silly it was to smash things in order to pick them up. Instead, he just captchalogued it. With the Hellforge card safely tucked away inside his backpack, he then proceeded to smash all of the pots on that level and pick up whatever fell out.
"Still no hellfire arrows..." Blah muttered, pocketing the coinage and solitary healing potion. "Or bolts... if those even exist down here..." He started to build another makeshift staircase.
"So are we ever going to mine that hellstone?" Hail reminded Blah curiously.
"Oh... heheh, right," Blah laughed, shoving the rest of his ash into the hole in the ceiling to seal it off. "Though I think I'll have to dig even deeper or else this building will fill up with lava."
"Yoshi..." Broshi called attention to himself, indicating the weakened Abra on his back.
Blah stopped. Broshi had a point, or at least from what he thought he was trying to say. They were in such a hostile environment, which they lacked the proper equipment to deal with, and yet Blah couldn't resist snatching up some treasure while he was here. There was a point where survival exceeded efficiency on the scale of priorities.
"You're right... we should focus on escaping alive," Blah agreed. "Maybe we'll come back later, but we're just too underleveled for this area now. If you'll excuse the gaming term," he added nervously.
Hail looked back at the entrance to the building that they made. "It seems like such a waste though..."
Blah snapped at the pegasus, causing him to recoil. "Is there anything you do that isn't questioning me?!"
"Jeez, relax," Hail responded. "I'm just saying, if we're going to be sucked into playing this game or whatever, we might not get a chance to come back here..."
"But," Blah refuted, "In the game, we'll have access to a system that can make equipment far better than what you can obtain down here..." Blah trailed off, suddenly getting an idea. "Wait, that's right! With alchemy, all we need is one hellstone bar and we can make more if we need to... or just combine it with our existing gear to jump straight to the end product!"
"Hang on a mo-" Hailstorm was cut off by Blah's evil eye. "Alright, alright, let's go with your idea..."
"You guys watch my six," Blah ordered. "I'll grab just enough hellstone to make one bar and then we're going straight for the exit." He descended the first staircase he had made. "Wherever that is..."
The waterfall was massive, its apex spanning miles across the horizon, just under the rising sun. Gravity took its toll on the liquid, pulverizing a portion of it into a fine powdery mist near the bottom. In between, a tall figure sat half inside on a rock protruding from the cliff face, cross-legged, enjoying the beauty from within.
He made absolutely sure this time to bring his umbrella. He didn't want to get his afro wet.
"Funny weather we're having," mentioned Bo-bobo. "It's like I'm sitting under a waterfall."
"You ARE sitting under a waterfall!" screamed Beauty from below the rapids. "You've been up there for hours!"
Don Patch, the umbrella, held up his hand to silence her. "Shush... you're ruining Bo-bobo's peace and quiet." Beauty could barely hear him over the roar of the falls.
"You call THIS peace and quiet?!" Beauty questioned. "And shouldn't we be doing something, oh, I dunno, PRODUCTIVE?"
"You've been screaming at me the whole time," Bo-bobo calmly countered, "and I haven't budged an inch. Sounds like you should be the one trying to be more productive."
Beauty stomped on the ground a few times with a disgusted pout. Bo-bobo rarely toyed with logic, but when he did he was rarely wrong. "Fine!" she surrendered. "What do you propose I do then?"
Before either of them could answer, a small blue and white object appeared at the top of the falls. Beauty squinted at it, trying to make out what it was. "Is that...?"
"BO-BOBOOOO!" The ship went over the waterfall, and a small blue humanoid shape tumbled from it.
Ever-tranquil, Bo-bobo casually cast out his arm to reveal a proud and alert peregrine falcon. Seeing the periled spinning mass falling before it, the falcon took off in a fluid motion much like the water behind it. It rapidly exceeded the speed of the falling ship and its gelatinous blue captain, and before long it had snatched the prize in its talons. Beauty and even Don Patch watched the scene with awe. The falcon deposited the catch safe and sound on the shore without a single scratch and loyally returned to Bo-bobo's glove.
Jelly Jiggler would sail again... but probably in a body cast. Jelly slammed into the water at full speed.
Thankfully, Jelly's body had enough give to it that he was able to survive the fall. He surfaced with little more than a dazed look on his face. Once both his eyes were able to focus on the same object again, the first thing he saw was his blue boat adorned with the Japanese character "nu", completely intact.
"Your falcon can't tell a dessert from a dinghy!" commented Beauty.
"Oh... my god... Bo-bobo..." gasped Jelly as he scrambled to shore. Bo-bobo, still toting the Don umbrella, had somehow descended the waterfall himself in between Jelly's fall and his recovery, and Jelly was now staring up at him in bewilderment. Tears flowed from his eyes as he collapsed onto all fours in front of him. "You saved my ship! How can I ever repay you?!"
"He doesn't mind?!" Beauty gawked once again.
"Don't thank me..." Bo-bobo laughed. "Thank my trusty falcon!" He held out his falconing arm.
"Oh yeah, Bo-bobo, when did you learn how to train a falcon?" Beauty asked, her curiosity overriding her stupefaction.
"He was born trained," Bo-bobo said, petting Don Patch, who had taken the place of the falcon at some point. He wore a red helmet with a golden falcon emblem on the front of it, and a dark eyeshield.
"Falcon rescue!" Don exclaimed over-enthusiastically.
"You sure showed us your moves..." Beauty droned sarcastically.
Jelly Jiggler stood up, shaking the water rather futilely off of himself. "Anyway guys, there's something really important I have to say!"
"Well, spit it out!" Don egged him on. "But not literally of course! I have no idea what's in that river besides water!"
"It's the DJ... he was murdered!"
The news was so shocking that Bo-bobo spit water all over Don Patch.
"Not the DJ!" Bo-bobo denied, clutching his afro in a panic.
"Who's the DJ...?" Beauty asked, equally shocked herself.
"Only the most happening dude this side of the Milky Way!" Don Patch clamored. "Jelly... who could have done such a thing?"
"I don't know..." Jelly muttered. "They didn't leave much in the way of evidence... all I saw was his body, collapsed next to his computer screen... he was in the middle of talking to Blahsadfeguie..."
"Mother of dog..." Don Patch sat down in the grass. "He must've been one of the... the..."
"The Gamers," Bo-bobo solemnly finished Don's sentence. "Without him, the session is doomed to fail..."
"Gamers? Session?" Beauty repeated, unsure how else to react to this situation. "Why am I only now hearing about this...?"
"So... th-that's it?" Jelly sputtered. "All of Blah's efforts to restore the dimensions... are in vain?"
"No," Bo-bobo answered, looking into the distance and letting a glint of light bounce off of his shades. "There is another way."
"Another way to what?!" Beauty asked, becoming frantic and impatient.
"I'll explain on the way," Bo-bobo said, standing up. The look on his face was the most serious Beauty had ever seen from him, and it was more than enough to silence her. "Come on, all of you. We have a lot of work to do."
Astra watched the rooftop of the castle intently as her client player clubbed yet another imp in the neck with her folding chair, exploding it into another small pile of blue and gray hexagonal material. It was like something out of a high-dollar movie, the heavily-clouded sky calling forth lightning and thunder every few seconds as Bellia fought waves of dark gray imps that possessed various mixed-and-matched features of foxes and cockroaches.
At Bellia's request, when things got intense, Astra would retrieve a particularly heavy chair or a suit of armor from inside the castle using her server controls and drop it on top of an imp or two, speeding up the process. But even then, it seemed as though neither of them could put a dent in the large numbers of imps that continued to scale the castle walls and engage her. However, the number of beat-downs did manage to put a dent or two in the chair that she had weaponized.
When the dragon had found a moment of pause, she turned to her laptop and typed out a quick instruction.
AD: Build up the walls to keep the imps off of me for a bit
She then slithered downstairs into the grand hall. Astra expanded the fortifications vertically, and slightly outward, expending some of the blue material that Bellia referred to as "build grist". The imps had trouble keeping their footing on the new walls and, more often than not, would slip and fall. She occasionally tossed around the large pieces of furniture to clean up the stragglers.
As this was going on, Bellia scampered about the grand hall at an alarming speed for a dragon, first snatching up a huge halberd from a suit of armor and then attending to the various machines scattered about, first stopping by a new machine deployed not long after her entry into the game. It resembled a piano and had a relatively small computer keyboard attached to it; by sticking a captchalogue card into a slot on the machine and typing in an 8-digit code, the machine punched a series of holes in the card. She punched a second card after storing her original folding chair into it. Astra watched curiously.
With the two cards, now punched, Bellia grabbed another of those shiny green cylinders and loaded it into the sewing machine known as a 'totem lathe', while putting both cards at once into the slot. The totem was carved as before, and the dragon practically slammed it onto the lesser pedestal on the fabricating device which the game called the 'alchemiter'.
A window appeared on Astra's screen, showing three objects: the two objects Bellia had used to make the totem, plus what Astra assumed to be the combination of the two. It was a particularly long-legged gray folding chair, long yet thin axe blades running down each leg, and the back had two thick bars for better grip. The screen also showed a cost in both types of materials gathered by the imps so far; 15 build grist, and 20 of the gray variety. The window labeled this new item as the "Folding Polearmchair".
The Folding Polearmchair materialized atop the alchemiter, and Bellia wasted no time in storing it in her strife specibus.
AD: Hah! I've been waiting for this moment!
AD: Take notes, you'll get to do this pretty soon yourself!
SP: That's amazing... does it work with any two items?...
AD: Yep! Any combination at all!
AD: Now, time to actually start building up to the gates.
AD: Oh, and you can take down those walls now.
They weren't quite sure how it happened. One minute, they were happily (if not nervously) chipping away at the hellstone, carefully minding the lava, and the next, they were fighting swarms of demons and flaming bats. Blah and co. had worked their way to the surface; the underground did bottleneck the forces, but they just kept coming and there was no room to fight in that small chamber, partially filled with lava thanks to the hellstone.
Blah stood in front of Broshi, protecting him and Seraphina from harm while Hailstorm desperately scouted a way out. Blah's armor was incredibly helpful at deflecting some of the attacks, but it was taking a beating and Blah had already sustained several scratches and bites nonetheless in areas that weren't completely covered. Despite the burning pain, he and Broshi fought on.
They were putting up quite a competent fight, as Broshi made up for Blah's lack of mobility and Blah made up for Broshi's lack of defense and power. The horde would not let up, however, and it wouldn't be long before they were both whittled down to nothing. "Any luck, Hail?" Blah shouted between grunts of pain and effort, ducking to let Broshi slash his sword at the adversary in front of him.
"Not looking good..." he responded, weaving in between bats, fireballs, and demon scythes. He was busy with a fight of his own, as the air above was just as hot as that below it and he had to severely strain himself to stay airborne for long periods. "The ceiling's pretty solid..." He aimed a crossbow bolt at the nearest demon, whose flight was hampered but not yet completely sabotaged.
The pegasus made a forced landing on another mound of ash near Blah's, panting heavily. The demons saw this as an opportunity and began to close in on him. A sitting duck, Hailstorm had only his crossbow as the denizens of evil drew nearer. He picked off the one he had injured earlier, finishing it off, but five more of them remained, each one brandishing a scythe of dark magic.
Blah almost didn't notice his comrade's position as he cracked his hammer into the side of another demon's head. He caught sight of the brightly-colored pony in his peripheral vision, and he twisted around to update himself on Hail's predicament. "Oh no..." breathed Blah. Quickly gauging the distance between the two islands, he figured there'd be no feasible way of helping him out without building a bridge, which would take time and leave him (and by consequence, the others) prone.
There was a flash of green. A demon reeled. Seraphina had sat up, her arm extended after having cast an Energy Ball at them to hopefully buy Hail some more time. Blah was pleasantly shocked to see Sera awake, but her lack of words or immediate follow-up suggested that it took a lot out of her just for that one projectile.
Indeed, this maneuver had the demons distracted long enough for Hail to fire a lethal bolt into the stricken devil's neck, and by the time the other assailants had gotten their priorities straight, Hail was aiming at another.
One spinning hammer strike later, deflecting a demon scythe that threatened to bifurcate him, he was once again facing Hail's direction... but what he saw made his heart skip a beat or two. "Wait, Hail! Don't shoot that one!"
His warning came a tad late as the equine was caught in the middle of pulling the trigger. "What?!" was all he could manage to say before he saw something fall out of the demon's talons, straight for the sea of lava. Everything seemed to stop. The object in question was what appeared to be a doll with brown hair and mundane clothing... but it looked all-too familiar.
Blah was the only one who recognized it, but as usual none of them were prepared for what would happen next.
A splash, followed by a sizzle... followed by a distant roar. Even the demons looked worried.
The roaring got louder. A quake emanated from the very core of the earth.
The demons promptly got the hell out of there. This reaction left all of the heroes with a ghastly chill running down their spines.
Something huge disturbed the uniform crimson glow of the magma in the distance, as if the terrain itself was shifting, crawling, writhing.
"Um..." started Hail, but he wasn't entirely sure what he was going to say next. None of the other heroes responded, they merely stood with nowhere to go and nothing to do but watch their fate encroach upon them.
The thing came into view as a grotesque, pinkish reddish mass covered in boils and blood, stretched across hell from wall to wall, ceiling to magma floor. Extending from it were hundreds of tendrils tying down hundreds of miniscule pairs of jaws, each one flexing rapidly as if trying to satiate a voracious, eternal appetite. The wall itself had a similar mouth of its own, as well as two enormous bloodshot eyeballs that conveyed its hunger just as effectively.
The sight of this monstrosity was gruesome enough on its own, but what really topped it off was the voice that accompanied it. A voice that Blah had thought he'd never hear again.
"AH, BLAHSADFEGUIE... WE MEET AGAIN, IN THE FLESH!"
**The Wall of Flesh has awoken!**
ahahaha. I know that feel, story-me. Been there done that. But the consequences of death here are far worse than those in the game. The question here is not IF I'll die, but how painful and maddening it will be...
Nah, I'm just messing with you. I'd never kill myself off in my own story. Right?
...right?
oh god someone please hold me